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Last week started off with about a dozen key unresolved issues at work. By late Tuesday, I found myself getting more and more frustrated that resolutions seemed nowhere in sight. But as the week wore on, many of the issues that had been stressing me out seemed to get resolved, often in just the manner I had hoped they would.

My dad has a phrase he likes to use to in these situations – “Let it age.” Just like a barrel of good Bordeaux, some issues get better with time. Going crazy trying to solve them in the short-term is like rocking in the proverbial rocking chair – it gives you something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere. It takes a certain degree of discernment to figure out if an issue at work is truly a problem and needs immediate attention, or if a little patience will allow the issue to resolve itself. I think that sometimes we just need to give others in the office time to get up to speed on a matter before it can be settled. When we don’t, we risk acting rashly and unnecessarily upsetting the apple cart.

Proverbs 15:18 reads that, “A hot tempered person starts fights; a cool tempered person stops them.” As Christians, we know that if there’s a problem, we can present our requests to God and recieve his peace (Phil 4), wait on the Lord (Psalm 37) and that when we do, he’ll direct our paths (Prov 3). When there’s an issue that has the potential of working everyone into a lather, we should strive to be the cool-tempered teammates that put others at ease with a simple encouragement – “Let’s let this one age a bit.”

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I try to practice this specifically with email. It is easy temptation at work to let your temper fire away in an email, either in response or just out of irritation to a situation. If you write it, but let it sit for a day before you send it, you often delete it.